Professor Toshio Kawai served as a guest speaker at the online symposium “Will COVID-19 Change Our Society? Replace? Or, Return to…?” vol.2.
Prof. Toshio Kawai served as a guest speaker and panelist at the online symposium “Will COVID-19 Change Our Society? Replace? Or, Return to…?” vol.2, on August 12, 2020.
The symposium is sponsored by Social Design Center Awaji and led by three panelists specializing in environmental systematics, plant ecology and astrophysics. The purpose of the symposium was to systematically grasp and discuss changes in the post-Corona society from three perspectives, namely, “natural providence,” “a social norm (social and economic structure)” and “a person’s wishes (wishes and values that people have),” by inviting a guest speaker for each session. Prof. Kawai was invited as a guest speaker at the second symposium and gave a lecture entitled “Kokoro that changes, kokoro that does not change – Grand narratives and small narratives.”
*Symposium Site (only in Japanese)
Prof. Kawai’s lecture focused on the level of mind among the three points of view “Nature, Society and Humans (mind)” raised by the symposium as a whole. First, he told us that there are aspects of kokoro that do not change and aspects that change dramatically (for example, the main symptom of a client shifted from anthrophobia to developmental disabilities).
Based on these points, Prof. Kawai spoke about the changes in kokoro in the post-COVID-19 world. He emphasized that in addition to “grand narratives” about how COVID-19 changes people’s minds in whole societies, individual solutions, namely “a small personal narrative,” would be more important, because he realized this importance through his clinical practices on the psychological impact of COVID-19, as well as his own practice of mental health care after earthquake disasters.
At the end, shifting to the perspective of regional characteristics of the southern part of Awaji Island , where this symposium was held, he said that it would be possible to create unique small stories at the community level as well as at the individual level.
Approximately 100 people attended the symposium online.
The contents of this symposium are closely related to another online public lecture of Prof. Kawai’s, “Involvement with COVID-19 and Kokoro’s Layers of History” on August 9 (Sun), 2020, delivered by the Unit of Kyoto Initiatives for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Kyoto University.
You can watch the lecture by clicking the link below (only in Japanese).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqrkm63OFyQ
2020/09/09